


Butterflies in your Tummy

by MagicQuill42



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Deceit is at the center of an argument’s cause, Heartsickness is taken literally., M/M, Ongoing argument in a couple, Sickness and vomiting happen, and shows up to be cryptic., but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 07:04:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16908375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicQuill42/pseuds/MagicQuill42
Summary: Sometimes butterflies in your stomach isn’t a good thing.





	Butterflies in your Tummy

**Author's Note:**

> hi-alex-the-ghost asked:
> 
> Any ship <3 Dialogue prompt: “look at you sacrificing yourself to others! When did you get a heart? I had thought you lost your moral code”
> 
> Okay, this is ripe for all kinds of angst… 0-0. This’ll be… whatever. Hurt/comfort, heavy on the hurt, I think. I changed the dialogue just a lil, bc it was either this or a dragon and that’s as far as that idea went.

They’d been fighting for a week. Seven whole days that Patton had been at odds with the love of his life.

It hurt. He wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t. He may have been putting on a brave face in front of Roman, but he spent many a night sobbing into Virgil’s shoulder.

Roman just didn’t seem to get through his head that his supposed best friend had gone out of his way to make Patton feel like no one would notice if he was gone. And why his hanging out with Deceit the way he was hurt so much.

It had been a week of endless pain in his chest. Of stiff conversation coming from lips that should have peppered his cheeks. Of cuddles that were nice, but not as intimate as he was craving. Of watching a slimy-faced jerk drape himself “platonically” over the legs of Patton’s boyfriend.

Maybe it was just a week of endless pain, period.

They’d had the big argument on Monday, and Patton had been fighting back tears Tuesday through Saturday before he felt something else start growing.

Nothing bad, necessarily. Just a little tickle in the back of his throat.

He knew what was causing it. Despite what some people seemed to think, Patton wasn’t dumb. Especially if it came to matters of the heart. Thomas had met a cute guy in a bar, and had been pining over him.

Thomas was heartsick. Which unfortunately meant Patton was getting a bit nauseous.

He carried on all of Saturday just fine, and was beginning to think that Thomas would be able to brush it off.

Then he woke up on Sunday and threw up butterflies.

An unfortunate consequence of Thomas having butterflies in his tummy when he was heartsick. Virgil hiccuped butterflies whenever Thomas was nervous, which wasn’t bad and was actually kind of cute. But when it was a consequence of being, as Logan would say, infatuated, they were also a symptom Patton got when he had heart-sick.

It was gross and not at all fun, and it left Patton feeling more exhausted than when he’d gone to sleep.

He rested his head on the toilet rim morosely, sniffling a little. He just wanted to crawl back under his covers, but it felt like they were a million miles away.

A soft knock sounded on the door, breaking Patton’s thoughts.

“Patton?” Roman asked softly. “Are you alright? I heard you heaving.”

Patton moaned in response, a low and miserable sound. His tummy hurt and he just wanted to go back to sleep.

Roman cracked open the door and stuck his head through, only to swing it all the way open when he caught sight of Patton. His eyes were large and worried. On any other occasion Patton would have offered him a smile and tried to ease his fears, but as it was he couldn’t summon up the motivation.

Roman crouched to his level and gently felt Patton’s forehead. He hissed through his teeth quietly.

“Darling you’re burning up!” He said. “Is this because of that guy Thomas met?”

Patton moaned again and sniffled. Roman tsked and his eyes grew sympathetic.

“Come on, sweetheart,” He said. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

Patton let himself be picked up, unable to even muster his usual giggle at being called a sweet heart. Roman carried him back to his bed and nestled him gently under the covers. He conjuered a small bucket and set it near Patton’s bed before sitting himself on the covers.

“Alright,” He said, summoning a frog-themed thermometer. “Say ‘ah.’”

Patton opened his mouth and Roman stuck it under his tongue. He gently brushed Patton’s hair back while they waited for the thermometer to beep and Patton started sniffling for a different reason.

Roman was just being so… nice. They were in the middle of a fight. His boyfriend had every reason to go back to bed and call Virgil instead. Every right. Yet here he was, being as gentle and loving as he was when this happened after they first started dating. Patton didn’t-

The thermometer beeped and Roman pulled it out. He frowned at the small numbers and gave Patton a worried look.

“Well I wouldn’t call it uber-high, but it definitely isn’t ninety eight point normal.” Roman said. “I can run and get you some medicine and we’ll see if we can’t kick this, okay darling? Tell me, is it more in your head or your tummy? Sniffles or queasy?”

“Queasy,” Patton said, voice raspy. “Don’t feel good.”

Roman gave him a small, sad smile. “I can tell. I’ll be right back, okay? I’ll just get the Pepto. Or maybe some NyQuil.”

He rose to leave and Patton snaked out a hand from under the covers and gripped his wrist. Roman looked at him curiously, but he stayed in one place.

Patton sniffled again, tears building in the corners of his eyes.

“‘M sorry.” He whispered.

Roman’s eyebrow arched in confusion. “Whatever for, Pattoncake? You can hardly help being under the weather.”

Patton shook his head. “I was being silly. I got… scared, I guess. I thought that if you and Deceit got too close he’d show you I wasn’t good enough. I tried to push you two apart and- and here you are taking care of me. You should be mad, and maybe you are, but you- you aren’t acting like it because I’m sick. I- I don’t deserve you, Ro.”

“Patton,” Roman breathed.

He lowered himself back onto the bed and scooped Patton into a warm embrace until he was firmly nestled in Roman’s lap. He repeated Patton’s name over and over, each time with a little more emotion until the tears in Patton’s eyes started trickling down his cheeks.

“Patton,” He said again, every emotion in a human heart poured into his voice. “Patton, Patton, Patton. I am not mad. I was, at first. But after awhile I thought that you were just mad at me. And you definitely had plenty of reason for that. I- Patton, honey, I’m sorry. I was so focused on making sure we didn’t have another Virgil that I didn’t take your feelings into account nearly as much as I should have. I thought you were just being jealous, but I should have known you wouldn’t-”

Roman sighed heavily. “I know normally that telling you who you can be friends with is a red flag in relationships, but I should have at least heard you out. I’m sorry.”

Patton pulled back so he could see Roman, scrubbing off some of his tears.

“Another Virgil?” He asked. “What do you mean?”

Roman’s frown deepened and he looked away from Patton.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I was quite beastly to Virgil originally.” He said. “I was quick to label him a villain and told myself I was only doing what was right by slaying the evil in front of me. Which was, for lack of better descriptor, stupid and narrow minded. We may have all had a hand in outcasting our resident emo, but I was an outright bully. Now that another ‘Dark Side’ has joined our ranks, I wanted to make sure he didn’t feel outcasted the way Virgil did. Get a jump on the whole ‘accepting him as one of us’ arc, you know?”

Patton smiled softly and gently stroked Roman’s cheek.

“That’s amazing of you, Roman,” He said softly. “I- I should have heard you out, too. I just- Deceit made me feel icky and I felt like you were ignoring that so- so I got mad.”

Roman brushed away a stray tear from Patton’s eye.

“How’d he make you feel icky, love?” He asked.

“He took my place.” Patton said simply. “He put on a Patton mask and for a whole twenty minutes nobody noticed I wasn’t me. Not Logan, not Thomas, not Virgil…”

He trailed off and Roman let out a heavy breath.

“Not even me.” He finished. “Oh honey, I- I’m sorry. I should have known-”

Patton shook his head. “You’re not a mind reader, Ro. I didn’t tell you, so there was no way you could have known.”

“Still, I should have asked.” Roman scoffed suddenly and shook his head. “Miscommunication. The greatest cause of all Shakespeare’s tragedies. But not, I think, the cause of the end of us.”

Patton leaned into Roman’s shoulder again and gently took his hand.

“Yeah,” He said, a small smile forming on his face.

“Tell you what, love,” Roman said. “If Deceit makes you feel icky, I won’t hang out with him as much. We’ve got a sort of makeup monday going on, and it would be suspicious if I canceled them, but beyond that I can weasel my way out of a few of the extra outings.”

“You can still be friends with him,” Patton protested. “I don’t want to make you choose. He just… something about him is making tiny bells go off in my head.”

Roman pressed a kiss against his temple. “There’s no choice, Patton. Just you, every time.”

Patton hummed gently and let his eyelids flutter closed for a moment.

Only for them to fly open again as something climbed up his throat.

He surged over Roman’s lap and heaved into the bucket. He dimly felt Roman rubbing circles into his back.

When he was finally done, Roman eased him back into laying on his bed, tucking him under the covers. He planted another kiss on Patton’s forehead and brushed back some more of his hair.

“I think I’ll go get you that medicine now,” He said. “You’ve got too comfy a quilt to risk staining. You go ahead and rest, darling.”

Patton gave him a brief, tight smile before letting himself drift off to sleep.

***

Roman sighed fondly as Patton fell asleep. The love of his life always did get hit hardest by heart-sickness. Probably a side effect of being Thomas’ heart.

Heh heh. “Side” effect. He’d have to tell Patton that one as soon as he was feeling better. As it was, his beloved was in no state to laugh his guts out. They were having a hard enough time staying in place as it was.

Roman gave him another loving smile before sinking out to the bathroom and rifling through the medicine cabinet.

He was just debating on Pepto-Bismol versus Ibuprofen when a small pop alerted him to someone else’s presence.

“Down early to save midnight oil, I see,” Deceit said. “Whatever for?”

Roman gave him a brief smile, Patton’s confession echoing in his ears.

“Alas, my dearest Patton is feeling the affects of Thomas’ pining.” He explained. “It should clear up soon enough, especially if our dear Thomathy can make a move, but until then I am tasked with easing the suffering of my true love.”

Deceit cocked his head to the side. “I thought the two of you were getting along.”

Roman shrugged. “We worked it out just moments ago. But were we still fighting I would not let it bar me from caring for him unless he did not wish me to.”

“You worked nothing out?” Deceit said. “Does that mean Patton has elected not to see reason?”

Roman paused a moment, trying to decipher the meaning of Deceit’s words. Elected to not see… elected to see…

“We reached a compromise.” He said finally. “Turns out all we really needed was a nice talk with each other and a few apologies.”

Deceit eyebrows furrowed. “A lack of compromise. That means we will have to hang out more, does it?”

Roman shrugged distractedly, finally settling on a medicine for Patton.

“We don’t have to stop, per say,” He said. “Just… a little less than we have been.”

He turned to say something else but Deceit’s sneer stopped him cold.

“Look at you, sacrificing everything for someone else,” Deceit said. “When did you get a heart, I thought you’d lost your ‘moral code’ by now.”

Roman started, blinking in disbelief.

“I… I don’t know what you could possibly mean by that.” He said. “Reversed or no. Regardless, though, Patton is not my moral compass, he is my boyfriend. My world, my stars, my moon, and my sun. He holds my heart in his hands, and he doubles it, trust me. You have never seen me act truly heartless, and you never want to.”

“That doesn’t sound like a threat at all.” Deceit growled.

“It isn’t one,” Roman said. “Unless you should choose to take it as one.”

Deceit scoffed. “I see your choice is unmade. Just keep in mind, when you view something without rose-tinted glasses, none of the flags look red.”

And with that confusing final statement, Deceit popped away.

Roman stared at where he’d been, baffled and confused by the encounter. He heaved a large, long breath and elected to explain himself better the next time he saw the darker side.

But for right now, he had a sick boyfriend to attend to.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m leaving it kinda ambiguous whether Deceit is sympathetic or not, which probably means he’s in character, lol. I want to make it clear that what he means is that Patton telling him who he can’t be friends with is a red flag, and while he’d normally be right about that, Patton does have a very real concern about Deceit making him feel horrible. I’m not saying that every time someone brings that up they’re in the right, but that on occasion there is reason behind it. I hope that makes sense?


End file.
